


A Light That Never Goes Out

by blythechild



Series: 2018 Advent Adventures with Blythe and Deejay [7]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Arguing, Compromise, Drama & Romance, Emily is being an idiot, Established Relationship, F/M, Fire, Fireplaces, Idiots in Love, Late Night Conversations, Misunderstandings, Propositions, Rejection, Romantic Friendship, Secret Relationship, Separations, Ugly Sweaters, Waiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 04:44:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17053382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: Emily comes home from work only to discover everything is ending.This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story contains mature themes and should not be read by those under the age of 14.





	A Light That Never Goes Out

**Author's Note:**

> A reader asked for an additional scene to [Firelight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8628148). I don't usually do that sort of thing, but something popped into my head and I thought it would be a perfect advent morsel. Please read Firelight before reading this, if you haven't already.

Between reports, traffic, and an afterhours meeting with the Director, by the time Emily shuffled into her darkened condo it was far later than she intended. She sighed when she saw the gloom – not quite dark because of the windows that faced the lights of the Capitol – but dim enough that everything was reduced to shadows and silhouettes. So much for her plan to kick-off a long weekend; she would try to find a way to fix it even though he’d probably shrug it off telling her it didn’t bother him. He said that a lot, but increasingly, it felt less like understanding and more like intentional distance. She dropped her keys and bag in the hall, and then flipped through her mail without reading it trying to avoid thinking, _you’re losing him._

But she turned the corner into her living room and the fireplace was lit at the far end of it. He was sitting on the floor in front of the sofa – only his squirrely hair could be seen in the shadows cast by the firelight. Her heart thudded once, hard, in her chest and she rushed forward, a smile spreading across her that she couldn’t control.

“You waited up,” she breathed with a joy out of proportion to the moment. She could still fix this.

“Hmmm,” he mumbled, distracted by the papers strewn across the carpet. He’d almost certainly make his eyesight worse if he kept doing boneheaded things like that: reading by firelight. “I thought you might be late, so…”

He was wearing an indescribably ugly cardigan. Even in next-to-no light, she could see it was two sizes too big, uneven, and had a disturbing argyle accent in brown and lime green. Not even the sight of him in glasses could moderate its dreadfulness. It was a weird idiosyncrasy of his that he sometimes dressed with enough style to take her breath away, and then wear something unrepentantly awful. It was possibly Reid’s only glaring inconsistency. And god help her, she sorta loved it about him. She slid onto the couch behind him and stretched out. Then she tugged at the opening of the heinous sweater and snaked her hand beneath it.

“Christ, where do you keep finding these monstrosities? Isn’t there a limit to how many ugly sweaters one man can own?”

Reid leaned back against the couch and looked up at her, all long neck, thick-rimmed glasses, and a lop-sided smirk.

“It’s become quite a challenge,” he murmured, resting against the sofa cushion, hair flopping everywhere. “I’ve set the bar incredibly high over the years, and I hate disappointing you.”

Emily grinned, shaking her head and then skimming her hand down inside the offending sweater. She leaned in, took his mouth softly, and felt his chest expand under her fingers as they roamed.

“Smartass,” she rumbled when they parted, but one of his hands flicked up and pulled her back to his lips. The kiss got deeper, his fingers a little too insistent, and he arched back against the sofa pressing his pecs and ribs into sharp relief under her palm. She moaned in approval – she hadn’t expected him to forgive her so quickly for placing work in front of _them_ again, but she’d take it if he was offering. She shuffled closer to the edge of the couch, changing their angle, and he opened up for her. Her hand slid down over him, flirting with his tensed muscles as she moved lower, until she reached his belt buckle and flicked it meaningfully. Then, suddenly, his kiss changed. He went rigid and still, letting her do what she wanted with him, but not encouraging her, not engaging anymore. Emily pulled her hand back as gently as she could and broke away from his mouth, balancing on an elbow and looking down at him with concern as he rested against the sofa. He just stared up at her, eyes owlish and pinched behind his lenses, which magnified the effect until it was unignorable. _Shit_ , she thought as her gut dropped in dread. Maybe he was angry after all. She could hope that was all it was. She could fix that.

“Hey, what’s going on?” she said quietly when all he did was stare at her. “Is it because I got caught at the office again? I know we had plans. The damned Director has zero-”

“Emily, what are we doing?” He asked so softly she almost missed it. But her gut cramped immediately as her whole body tensed into a tremendous, silent ‘NO’.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, where is this going?”

“It’s…” she choked. “It’s going forward. Obviously.”

“It isn’t, Em,” he sighed and rolled his head to look away from her and to the fire instead. “We hide it at work, you turned down my proposal… it’s been almost two years and I’m still just a guest here…” He waved his hand around her darkened condo.

“You _are not_ a guest, Spencer. All of your stuff is here-”

“You make me maintain an apartment I haven’t spent a night in for fourteen months, Emily,” Reid growled and then sat up away from her. He turned from her completely, glaring at the fireplace. “I’m not on the lease here, I don’t pay rent – I’m a houseguest in the strictest definition of the term. You don’t want to marry me. So, what _do_ you want? You owe me a clear answer, so I can finally decide what to do about this.”

She sat back into the couch with a huff. He wasn’t letting her off the hook this time, and so much more besides. Part of her always wondered why he’d never pushed her about her reasons for saying ‘no’.

“Spence, you proposed a week after you got out of prison. And you were angry as hell at me for how that went down – don’t deny it – so how could I possibly say yes? I mean, Jesus, that’s not fucking fair…”

He turned back to her, a ferocious scowl on him that would’ve put some of Hotch’s to shame. 

“Okay, well, maybe you were right about that. I was angry you didn’t believe me when I said Mom was in danger, and I was angry that the Bureau wouldn’t help me. But do you really think that one emotion cancels out all the rest?” His hand sliced through the air, cutting it in half. “Couldn’t I be angry and still in love at the same time?”

Emily sat there blinking, at a loss for how to react. She loved him desperately, but she’d never found the right way to say it. And his five-month incarceration had taken years off her life, she was certain. All she could do was push it aside in daylight, keep her head down, and work to get him free. At night she trembled until her muscles cramped, jumping every time her phone beeped thinking, _this is it – someone finally killed him…_

“Maybe I was angry at you,” he continued when she didn’t. “But you were also the thing that helped me make it back home again. I might have been conflicted at the time, but I still meant every word I said. I’ve loved you for years, Em – through the Doyle mess, leaving for London, when you were with Mark… all of it. It hurt more than you could possibly believe when you told me no.”

“Spence…” she said roughly, firelight flickering in distraction because she was blinking too much. She wondered why he’d stayed – she thought about it often and would lock it away when the answers she came up with drew blood from her. Now, listening to him retell it, she couldn’t imagine why he’d let her get away with injuring him that way. “I just… I wanted it to be… a clear choice for you. Not something… muddied and complicated by other impulses.”

Reid leaned hard on the sofa’s edge and got close enough to kiss her, but his expression was infuriated, determined. She held her breath.

“Okay, that’s fair.” He breathed out sharply and then his mouth thinned to a sharp line. “The prison stuff is behind me now. Scratch is dead. Hotch isn’t coming back. The unit isn’t in any immediate danger of being disbanded or reassigned. There’s no sword hanging over our heads anymore.”

He watched her for a moment, the flames from the fireplace lighting one side of him in oranges and golds, masking his eyes with glare from his lenses, and then those sharp edges fell into darkness. He shifted, seeming uncomfortable, and then he shook it off and sat straighter.

“If I asked again, would your answer be any different? You’re the most important aspect of my life, Emily. If I’m angry, or scared, or aggravated that’s just as true as when I’m joyful, ecstatic, or mesmerized. What I feel is complex, hearty, and it’s not going away. If you don’t feel the same way… well, I have to know that. I can’t keep going as the guy you love when nobody’s looking.”

 _Fuck_ , she thought a moment before she choked so noticeably that her hand flew to her throat as if to help her breathe. _fuck… he’s leaving…_ She wiped away dampness from her cheek quickly, angry with her own frailty and the shittiness of this moment. Because she wanted to say yes – there hadn’t been anyone or anything in her heart until that instant he burst to life for her in that abandoned forestry service cabin. Nothing filled her life the way Spencer Reid did, and she had a suspicion that nothing ever would. But their lives had annoying consequences that didn’t give a shit about their hearts. When she brushed her cheeks and looked at him, there was worry all over his face, as if he hadn’t bargained on her losing it so completely. Maybe he was certain she cared less.

“Spencer, we can’t,” she trembled. “The job-”

“Screw the job,” he rumbled, shuffling on his forgotten papers until his breath brushed her cheek. His hand sunk into her hair, and she leaned into it hoping to perversely find strength from him to refuse him again.

“No, we can’t screw the job,” she gulped in to make herself sturdier. “It’ll turn around and bite us like a rattler, Spence.”

“Em, the team already knows. C’mon, they’re professionals. They know and they don’t care-”

“Of course, they know,” she grumbled. “I’m not worried about _them_.”

“Then what is it?” His fingers circled in her hair, but his voice was tight, on the edge of being angry once more. A disobedient part of her loved him when he was angry. Dammit, she just _loved_ him, period.

She looked up and hated that she couldn’t see his eyes. Reaching out, she slowly drew his glasses away. If this was it, she didn’t want anything between them when it happened.

“There’s talk of an Assistant Directorship coming up,” she said quietly, the only other sound in the condo was the muted crackling of the fire behind its glass doors.

“You won’t get the promotion if we get married?” he mumbled a little incredulously.

“No, no. That’s not it. I don’t really give a damn about the directorship in itself. But… I’m almost fifty, Spence. I can’t keep running into unwinnable scenarios with a crappy piece of Kevlar and a Glock anymore. I’m not Hotch. Or Rossi, for that matter. Some asshole’s gonna get the drop on me one day, and that day is fast approaching.”

“Em-” he started but she held up her hand and he fell silent again.

“I could still be useful as an AD. I’m not done with this job yet, but I have to face reality: my field days are behind me.” She went still for a moment, eyes glancing down at the sofa beneath her, wondering where the time had gone. She never pictured herself getting old. “We could get married and no one would probably care that much, even if we still worked together. I could still be considered for promotion even…”

Reid waited and then got impatient. “But…”

“But… I wouldn’t get to choose my successor if he is _my spouse_. The cry of favoritism would be so loud they’d hear it in all the way to the District.”

Reid blinked as if this were the last thing he expected. “I don’t… I don’t care about being Unit Chief.”

“Well, I _do_ ,” she growled. “I’ve worked too hard at that place to hand it off to some newbie profiler or a transfer from another branch who simply doesn’t get it. You know what it’s like. If the right person isn’t at the helm, the whole thing blows sky high. The work matters too much to let that happen.”

“But… okay. But…” He sputtered like he was physically glitching over this. “What about… someone else? J.J. or Tara…”

Emily shook her head too vigorously. “J.J. doesn’t believe she can do it. You know that – you’ve seen it. Tara’s too new. Not enough experience under her belt, and maybe not enough heart as well. The boys don’t have the leadership chops, and Rossi’s in the same aging boat as me. It _has_ to be you, Spencer. You’re seasoned and tough without losing your humanity. You think before you act, you look for solutions to avoid violence. You know how the system works – both inside and out – and you won’t let anyone push you around. Not anymore. And above all else, you are a teacher. You can find the next crop of agents and make sure they get what they need to succeed. It has to be you. You’re my clutch guy – the one I trust in no-win scenarios, remember?”

“Emily,” he sighed in exasperation, and then dropped his hand from her hair to run it through his, making it stand up in strange tangles. “Firstly… thank you. For believing in me so fiercely. Just… I don’t know how to process that at this moment. But secondly,” he looked back at her with a frown. “You can’t make me take a job that refuses my happiness. I don’t care how good your intentions are. Don’t sit there, loving me, whether or not folks think you should, and tell me I can’t be your husband because of a damned job. That’s complete bullshit.”

Emily blinked like he’d slapped her. “Did you just say… bullshit?”

He nodded. “No matter how much satisfaction I get from my work, it’s a drop in the ocean compared with how I feel about you. If the job says I can’t have that, then I don’t want the job, period.”

He reached forward cupping her face with both hands. “Do you love me?” he whispered. “Do you want me next to you for the rest of your life?”

Emily’s throat closed up. “Y-you know I do. It’s… so much more than that.”

He kissed her suddenly with an urgency that felt punishing. “Then marry me. And we’ll figure out the promotions and ensure the unit’s future another way. I won’t settle for one over the other.”

She pulled away from him, so close to believing his determined, upbeat view that the word was on the tip of her tongue. But she was a realist with historically bad luck when it came to happiness. Just _saying_ they could do it didn’t mean that they actually could. 

“Spencer, why is marriage so important? We don’t have children to legitimize. Neither one of us is religious… why can’t I tell you you’re the only one I want and have that be enough? Marriage is just a contract. Nothing more.”

“Because it means something to me,” he snapped and dropped his hands. “It means I chose you out of seven billion others. It means I’m proud of you, I’m transfixed by you, and that the only place in the world where I feel home is you. It’s a scream into the darkness of change and uncertainty that I’m making a stand with _this person_ , trying to erect something permanent in the flow of the universe.”

He took a deep breath to settle himself, and then he looked at her, eyes pleading and liquid in the flickering light. He knew how that look got to her. “It’s the belief that I can make it when I’m waiting to be shanked in a cell. It’s the barest thread leading back to my life when I betray my principles in order to survive. It’s the whisper of you, out there, and I turn towards it because it’s a light that never goes out. You know how I get scared in the dark…”

Her chest tightened so quickly and dramatically that it felt like her bones were grinding together. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. All she could do was force her gaze to the mismatched argyle pattern in his sweater and _live_ in it until her body became a shelter for her battered heart again.

“Nothing means more than that, Em,” he whispered. “No job is going to tell me I can’t have that. Only you can tell me no.”

Emily put her head in her hands and hid behind the curtain of her hair for a moment. But then the trembling started, and she knew if she let it have her, she’d end up being useless. She was _not_ going to be useless now – too much depended on her holding her shit together. She sighed wetly, brushed her hair back, and then slid to the floor beside him making his papers wrinkle even more. He went still at her side, just watching her, waiting, and she leaned hard against him, resting her head on the shoulder of that terrible sweater as she watched the fire dance before them. He remained stiff for a while, and then he gave in, his body softening against hers, as if he didn’t have the strength to resist the pull. That was something they shared, she thought with a sad sort of fondness, it was probably the secret to their resilient sense of forgiveness.

“Remember when we got stuck on that mountain in the blizzard?” she asked quietly, over the crackling fire and the heavy nothingness of what they weren’t saying.

“Of course. It’s hard to forget.” He sighed, and it fluttered over the top of her head. “It’s also one of my favorite memories.”

“It is?”

He nodded into her hair but didn’t elaborate.

“I was so afraid I’d lose you that day,” she continued after another moment of quiet. “You were so pale, so cold. I had this vivid image in my mind of you dropping down into the snow and staying there. Sometimes I still dream about that.”

She felt something brush her arm and glanced down to see his index finger tracing her forearm. She twisted so that her hand was palm up and waited. After a moment, his hand skimmed her outline, and then he linked a finger around hers and squeezed gently.

“It was the first time I recognized that feeling for what it was,” she whispered.

“Recognized it how?”

“That losing you would be more than losing a friend.” 

She watched their hands and saw when his finger squeezed her tighter. 

“It shook me long after we found shelter in that cabin. I realized that we were different than we used to be, and what you meant to me had changed too.” She rubbed her thumb along the line of his finger – the long phalanges, the pronounced joints, the vein meandering back to his wrist. “I scared myself shitless when I asked you to kiss me.”

She felt him turn towards her, the scratch of the cardigan rubbing against her cheek.

“I was scared I’d ruin what we had,” she continued. “I’m scared about that now.”

He reached his other hand across and traced a line down her cheek to her chin. Just the barest of touches, like she was priceless. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to just melt into that and forget the rest; he deserved more.

“I didn’t think anything could scare me more than that. Then the mess in Mexico happened.”

His finger dropped from her face.

“The cognitive interview we did… Christ, I was terrified by what you didn’t know. Then I denied the existence of the interview recording. It only took a moment, but right then I knew I’d tank my career to save you, even if you were a murderer.”

“Jesus… Em…”

“Then you went to prison for five months, and I quietly lost all of my control.”

“Emily…” he whispered, but she shook her head and it silenced him. He needed to know it all.

“I had to hold it together at work. Because no one knew about us, officially anyway. And I had to keep my position as Unit Chief because it was our strongest leverage to prove your innocence. I couldn’t trust that to another set of investigators. But it was all I could do to stop myself from calling and screaming at your lawyer to get you out any way she could. Bribery, blackmail, anything. And I couldn’t visit you, Spence. I couldn’t look you in the eyes there and then walk away from you. I was hanging on by my fingernails… I wasn’t sleeping towards the end… I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. I only thought about my survival then…”

“Emily, don’t do this to yourself,” he whispered into her hair. She shook her head again and squeezed his finger as hard as she could.

“When we finally got you out, you were so angry, and I knew part of that anger was directed at me. But it was such a relief that you survived, I didn’t care. Even if we ended, it was okay because we got you back. And I learned something about myself; I knew then that I’d burn the world to protect you. Christ… figuring that out really fucked me up.” She sighed deeply. “And then you proposed, with all of that hate still behind your eyes when you looked at me.”

She fell quiet, and he shifted beside her.

“Huh,” he mumbled.

She turned and looked up at him for the first time. He seemed quietly devastated, eyes distant.

“I couldn’t say yes, Spencer. Don’t you see? I just couldn’t.”

He swallowed visibly. “I suppose… I suppose it was pretty bad timing on my part. After what I’d been through, I guess I just wanted to get my intentions out there. I didn’t want to waste any more precious time. Maybe I didn’t expect you to accept. Or that you’d ignore my anger somehow.”

“Not much chance of me ignoring anything about you,” she smiled sadly. His grip shifted so that his whole hand curled around hers.

“Okay, so… I get it now. Why you said no then. But if you’re saying no again now, because of the job… how can we possibly go on from here?”

She took a deep breath in and held it until her chest felt like it would explode. “We can’t,” she choked out.

His expression dropped, and his eyes seemed enormous. Then pain edged its way into every line of him, and his cheeks turned pink even in the dim light. His eyes fell away from hers, and then his hair flopped into them. His shoulder began to shake against her.

“Oh,” he whispered.

She rolled up onto her knees in an instant, crinkling the reports under her, and cupped him on either side of his jaw, lifting his wrecked gaze to hers.

“You asked once and I said no. I won’t take that back. It wasn’t the right moment, and now we both understand that. You can’t ask again. I won’t make you beg, Spencer.” Her thumbs stroked his jaw gently, over and over as she held him, and his gaze got glassy while she watched. “But I’ve never asked you. It’s a whole other ballgame if I do that.”

He blinked so quickly that a tear slipped loose and skimmed down to her hand holding him. “W-what?”

“If I asked you to overlook how I’ve taken you for granted for so long. If I said… I’m sorry, and it was stupid to put the job before us. If I asked for your forgiveness one more time, because you’re graceful that way and I seem to screw up often, would you stay? If I asked _you_ to be my husband…”

Her voice gave out, and she inwardly chafed at how shaky she felt all over. She was just terrible at vulnerability, and yet it was something he absolutely craved from her. It was amazing that they’d managed to get this far at all, considering her defenses held them up everywhere and his pursuit of who she was underneath them was the foundation of his love for her.

“There were a lot of ‘ifs’ in that statement,” he whispered unsteadily. “Try again without them.”

She choked suddenly, and it sounded a little like a wet chuckle. _Smartass._ “Will you marry me or what?”

“You are the epitome of romantic declarations,” he smiled. Another tear slid down to her hand. “Yes, I will, Emily,” he finished softly.

She had no choice but to kiss that smile then, to pull it inside and let it light her up from within. They had narrowly averted disaster _again._ She didn’t want to think how many more times they had this in them. It was time to get serious about their lives. Not the sort of serious that involved being stalked by killers or chasing maniacs in the dark. It was time for the sort of gravity that made you realize how improbable a lasting love was, and to keep abusing the one you’d fallen into by accident was a dangerous game that you’d eventually lose and end up breaking yourself into a thousand pieces in the process. Reid was right: no job was worth more than that. If they were forced to work apart, so be it. If she was denied promotion as punishment, she’d take that. If the unit disintegrated because of their loss, then it wasn’t strong enough in the first place and deserved its fate. The only commitment she felt wholeheartedly anymore was that she’d tear down the world for this man, and as much as that frightened her, she knew it was exactly who she was meant to be.

The kiss was slow and lush, the soft slip of him against her that drove her mad with how deep the feeling sunk into her bones. His arms wrapped around her, lifting her up and shuffling her until she straddled his lap, the fire at her back and both of them leaning into the couch. He moaned quietly, pulled back, licked his lips, and then shyly dipped towards her again, like an echo of his insecurity when they first began. She’d had to coax him then, back before he understood the power he had over her. It made her smile against him, remembering, and then she nipped his lips to remind him he wasn’t only that anymore.

“Are you really sure you want to put up with my bullshit for the rest of your life?” she mouthed into his cheek. He sighed deeply, and it shuddered out of him like relief.

“I’ve put up with it so far, haven’t I?”

She pulled back and looked at him, hand skimming into his hair as he closed his eyes.

“I’ll never give you children.”

He flicked his eyes open, the firelight making them darker and sparkling somehow.

“I already have a family. You taught me that, remember?”

She nodded, thinking about that conversation in the cabin, and then one much later when he told her on the jet how much he loved them all, and that he forgot to say it when he should. He was learning to accept it though. She smiled again, brushing the edge of his lip with her thumb.

“I feel bad,” she said eventually with a smirk, one hand trailing into the collar of his cardigan and fiddling with it. “I don’t have anything to give you. I asked – I should’ve had a ring or something. Or at least a damned plan. That’s how it works, right?”

“Oh. Ummm, I have one,” he perked up. “A ring, I mean. It’s in a drawer in the bedroom. But you’ll have to wear it because it’s too small for me.”

Her smirk died away. “What?”

He shrugged, looking embarrassed. 

“When did you buy a ring?”

“After you said no,” he mumbled, and her heart cracked a little.

“Oh, Spence. Why?”

He shrugged again, staring at a spot on her arm instead of her expression. “I thought you might change your mind one day,” he said quietly. 

She leaned down, clutched him close with fistfuls of his stupid sweater, and kissed him until they both had to gulp away. Then his hands were in her hair, down her neck, cinching her blouse tight across her back, mouth moving to consume her, like he was fire and she was gasoline. She rocked in his lap, curling him back until he had to stretch up to reach her mouth, the pages beneath them crinkling and tearing as they moved. She pushed into him, heard his whimper deep in his chest, thread her fingers through his hair until he moaned the way she wanted him to. It shivered out of him as their lips slipped and his hands crushed her closer, _I love you…_

“Wish we’d done this years ago,” she gasped when they broke away and then came together again breathlessly. “Wish so much of this were different…” 

“I don’t think it works like that,” he kissed into her skin, holding her hard enough to bruise. “Things happen when the timing best suits them. No way around it.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in fate,” she stretch as he kissed down her throat. Her fingers wrestled with his sweater; she wanted him out of it now for reasons other than aesthetics. 

“I don’t.” 

He helped her, wiggling his shoulders out of the cardigan while she yanked on the fabric too hard. He wore a thin t-shirt underneath that disguised his form just enough to make her eager to get rid of it. 

“Maybe there’s an alternate universe out there where we met much younger, had a bunch of kids, a house in the suburbs, and you got fat and I went bald, and we’re tired with how bored we are with each other.”

“Fat?” she pulled back suddenly, then ran her fingers through his ludicrous tangles again. “ _Bald?_ ”

He smiled at her, the kind that broke his face into sharp lines and soft crinkles. Then he magnified it all by laughing at her, shaking her along with him, his lips flushed, his eyes adoring.

“You should see your face right now,” he murmured. “Yeah. Fat and bald. Even if there are a thousand different versions of us out there living a thousand different variations of our lives, there’s no assurance that any one of them is better than this one. And in this one, I’m in love with an amazing person who loves me back, and we’re probably about to have incendiary make-up sex, and when we’re done with that, we’re going to marry each other. Not bad at all, really.”

“Incendiary make-up sex?” she cocked an eyebrow at him, and his expression went from adoring to confused in a second.

“Well, we are, aren’t we?”

“Of course, we are. But, ‘incendiary’?”

It was his turn to look dubious. “Are you daring me? Is this a dare? Because you should know better than to bait me by now.”

“Maybe it’s part of a crafty plan that only a few minutes ago I denied having.”

Reid shook his head and pulled her back to his lips. “This conversation is beginning to circle. Can we go to bed instead?”

“Nuh-uh,” she licked into his mouth, and drew one of his hands to the buttons on her blouse. “Right here in front of the fire. Like I wished we had in that dingy cabin on the mountain.”

He’d undone two buttons on autopilot when he broke away from her mouth. “You wanted… back then?”

She nodded slowly and watched his cheeks turn pink under the heat of the firelight. Then she began to unbutton her shirt from the bottom, working her way up to him.

“W-wow. You never fail to surprise me,” he murmured, and then cupped her cheek. “Please promise you’ll never stop surprising me.”

“Promise,” she breathed after she kissed him. Then she shrugged out of her blouse and all appreciable conversation ended.

Afterwards, as they lay tangled and tired on the carpet, and Reid grumbled about how he’d have to reprint all of his paperwork, Emily turned in the blanket and glanced at the movement past the darkened windows.

“Spencer,” she whispered with awe, and then leaned up on one elbow. “It’s snowing.”

“Can’t be. It’s too early for snow this far south,” he said sleepily.

But she got up, slipping from the blanket and the dying fire, until her naked silhouette was a pale smudge in the darkness of the window pane. She shivered as she watched the delicate flakes zip into view and then fall away, but he was a step behind her. He wrapped the blanket around them both, and pressed his body to her back, warming her instantly. He was a pale blob over her shoulder in the reflection, his crazy hair just an indigo outline floating in the city skyline.

“Well, look at that,” he said with wonder before he kissed the back of her neck. 

She smiled, leaning into him as she poked a hand free and curled it over his neck. His arms tightened the blanket around them, head dipped to her shoulder, and they stood that way watching the snow together until the horizon became a thin line of light with the coming dawn. He coaxed her to bed then wordlessly, with his hands and his mouth, leaving the night behind them. But not before she put his sweater in the fireplace.

In the morning they made coffee and a plan. And when they walked into the office on Monday morning, they were both sporting rings everyone was too polite to ask about. _Let them deal with us now_ , she told him after their vows, and she meant it with every step she took at Quantico and every questioning look she silenced with their unwavering capability. Reid just smiled as he rolled the ring around his finger absently.

And in addition to the ring, he also had a brand new, ugly sweater.


End file.
